


Pelagic

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Devastation-verse [21]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-09
Updated: 2004-07-09
Packaged: 2018-10-21 07:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10680123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity





	Pelagic

The sea’s echoless horizon made a hemisphere of the world, domed with a cobalt, cloud-strewn heaven and apexed with a sun higher and brighter than Jack had ever seen it, a sun which hung above the slow, steady waves like a burnished golden coin – though Jack’s darkening skin bore witness to its heat, and he narrowed his eyes against the noontide glare, searching for the long, flat cloud that would mark land; for land they’d come to by sunset, Jack Sparrow had told him so, and he’d learned – just from watching the faces of the crew during the captain’s occasional rambling monologues – to heed what Captain Sparrow said, whether it was a casual-seeming observation about another member of the company (who’d invariably turn red and cast his eyes down to the _Black Pearl_ ’s sunbaked black deck) or a prediction of where they’d be by next day’s noon, predictions that were so accurate that they must be based on some arcane knowledge or science, or at any rate something considerably beyond Jack Shaftoe’s own keenly-honed sense of dead reckoning; part of Captain Sparrow’s precision, for sure, sprang from his intimate acquaintance with every stay and spar of his darling ship, an acquaintance that Shaftoe found himself _envying_ , as though, with the ship gone or Sparrow – ha! – on land, the Captain’s keen, beguiling attentions would be wholly focussed upon his newest crew-member, this refugee from a life ashore who’d taken to the ocean – to this huge, bright, inverted bowl of sky, and the sway and surge of the waves that ran from horizon to horizon, and further, without let or hindrance – as though this was where he’d always meant to be; for Jack Shaftoe, lately of Southwark and Dunkirk, had found an unsuspected freedom here aboard the _Pearl_ , a liberty he’d never encountered on any voyage before, for else, if he’d known it even once – on that first storm-wracked trip north to Qwghlm, or last year’s journey, crammed into the cable-tier, across the ocean to Jamaica – he’d never have come again to shore, and would have found much earlier his aptitude for time and tide, his head for heights (for here he stood at the mast-head, quite at ease, one sunburnt arm hooked around the tarred wood and his bare feet braced on the top-yard, his free hand – the branded V, for Vagabond, now overlaid with the angry colours of a new tattoo – shading his eyes as he stared south towards the unseen, unknown coastline that Sparrow had promised them) and the sense of exultation he felt on board the _Black Pearl_ , the fastest and most fabled pirate ship to ply the blue-green Caribbean, a ship whose motion made her feel alive against his skin; it was a simple joy, and Jack Shaftoe would have mocked that simplicity even a month ago, for he did not care to think of himself as a simple man – though recent changes had overtaken him to so great an extent that for a while he was content to laze, to lie back and let life’s current take him and spin him around, transforming him from land-lubber to sailor (to _pirate_ , as a matter of fact, or at least as soon as the _Pearl_ did any actual pirating) and … oooh, Jack shivered at the thought of the other changes that had been wrought upon him by his new Captain – actually, hang on, when had that happened, calling another man ‘Captain’ without mockery? – and his own enthusiastic acceptance (nay, call it ‘need’) of those changes, of Jack Sparrow’s dark, wicked gaze and ravishing mouth, of the way that his hands felt on (and, oh, in!) Jack Shaftoe’s body, the way that the rest of the crew seemed to regard this as neither abnormal nor deplorable, in fact even desirable – no doubt because it kept their Captain cheerful and merry, and saved them all from his whims; for Jack Shaftoe was now quite sure that Sparrow, whether or not he could be classed as some special sort of Imp himself, was as beset, or blessed, by his own Imp of the Perverse as Shaftoe himself; and perhaps their coming together (a thought that made Jack Shaftoe blush like a girl) had been no more than the desired product of two Imps’ plotting, though Jack liked to think that Sparrow had seen something worthy in him, in that first sidelong look from under the shadowing brim of his disreputable hat, something that had made the pirate pause, had made him plot the instruction, seduction and abduction of Jack Shaftoe as carefully as he’d plan a treasure-raid; perhaps Sparrow had seen, not only a pretty face (for Jack had received too many compliments, approving smiles and outright invitations from others, men and maids alike, to have any false modesty about his own appearance, never mind that it was more than a little sun-scorched, gouged and rope-burnt these days) but also something within, some reflection that signified a kindred spirit, a fellow man whose thoughts were of liberty and the pursuit of happiness; not forgetting (it was all too fresh and thrilling for Jack Shaftoe to forget for more than a few moments) the pursuit, these latter days, of Captain Sparrow himself, the mutual game of circling and fencing (literal and figurative; they traded tricks and blows each afternoon in cutlass-play) and flirtation that played itself out leisurely each day and led both Jacks to the same wedge-shaped, lavishly-mattressed space each night after the rum and dancing and pleasant merriment that marked life on board the Black Pearl once the sun had slipped into the sea; the game whose resolution, over and over, meant that Jack Shaftoe _eagerly_ and _willingly_ (often _noisily_ , too) gave himself to a pirate Captain, happy for once to lay and let himself be taken in a way – nay, a multiplicity of ways (Jack Sparrow had not been lying when he’d told Shaftoe of the many methods he’d learned to bring pleasure to himself and to whatever companion shared his bed) – that once would have had him bellowing with laughter, had anyone suggested that Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds, might find pleasure in being a pirate’s catamite; might find release in acts that he’d avoided like the Plague while sojourning in Port Royal; might find release at _all_ , considering the anatomickal deficiencies with which he’d been left on that fateful night in Dunkirk … but Jack Sparrow had proved to him, night after night, that he was more than willing to ensure that Half-Cocked Jack felt the benefit of a full, hard cock, touching off explosions deep within Jack’s body (and shaking, let it be said, with his own eruptions and crises), burning off each day’s new heat in a spark-filled, salt-flavoured blaze until the two of them were twisted together, spent and aching and curiously vulnerable, finding a strange comfort in the slide of hot damp skin, the gleam of a smile in the gloom, the soft inconsequential murmur of wind and water carrying the _Black Pearl_ over a silver sea: and that other game they played, the lilt of Sparrow’s voice and the rougher edges of Shaftoe’s as they dreamt aloud of futures shared.


End file.
